Atmanirbhar vs Nirbhar Bharat

THE data recently released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry deserves to be examined closely. India’s merchandise imports in 2025-26 reached $774.98 billion against exports of $441.78 billion, a trade deficit exceeding $333 billion — the largest in the country’s history. This is the price of a structural contradiction that India has so far refused to honestly confront: the vision of Atmanirbhar (self-reliant) Bharat amid the economics of deepening import dependence.The irony sharpens when set against the backdrop of the International Monetary Fund’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook, which ranked India sixth among the world’s largest economies. (last year, India was declared the fourth-largest economy). The currency depreciated, the GDP base year was revised and the rankings corrected themselves with quiet ruthlessness. The rupee touched record lows (Rs 97.15/dollar), which increased imported input costs for manufacturing. The RBI sold over $100 billion in spot and forward markets to defend the rupee, drawing forex reserves from a peak of $728 billion to around $690 billion within weeks.No data point punctures the Atmanirbhar narrative more sharply than India’s trade with China, its largest single-source country. Imports from China have risen by 115% over 10 years — from $61.28 billion in 2016-17 to $131.63 billion in 2025-26 (17% of the country’s total import bill, the largest share), growing at 11.5% annually. Electrical and electronic equipment alone account for over $47 billion; machinery for $27 billion; organic chemicals for over $11 billion.In plain terms, this means that phones assembled in India’s PLI-incentivised factories run on Chinese integrated circuits. The pharmaceutical formulations India exports worldwide are synthesised from Chinese Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients. The semiconductor manufacturing machinery in our newest plants is sourced from China at 99.5%. We are building “Made in India” products with “Made in China” inputs. The Production-Linked Incentive scheme has created assembly lines, not supply chains. India has replicated China’s early-stage model (global assembly) without executing its deeper stage (supply chain ownership). That is the gap between Nirbharta and genuine Atmanirbharta.India imports around 90% of its rare-earth minerals — the critical inputs for fighter aircraft, missiles, radar systems, smartphones, EV batteries and wind turbines — from China, despite possessing vast untapped monazite containing neodymium, samarium, lanthanum and other rare-earth oxides along the coasts of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. Only about 1% of India’s rare-earth potential has been exploited.Recognising the strategic urgency, the government has begun course correction: the 2026-27 Budget announced a Rs 10,000-crore Rare Earth Corridor across four mineral-rich coastal states. India has also joined the Quad’s Critical Minerals Initiative, in collaboration with the US, Japan and Australia, to pool allied supply capacities and reduce unilateral dependence on China for rare-earth materials. These are meaningful signals, but signals alone do not substitute for decades of neglected supply-chain investment.Six years after the launch (May 12, 2020) of the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission, India’s trade deficit with China has grown from $64.7 billion in 2020-21 to $112.16 billion in 2025-26. The rare-earth gap illustrates the broader pattern precisely: we possess the geology; we lack the industrial ecosystem to exploit it.Beyond China, three import dependencies constitute slow-burning emergencies that rarely receive the attention they deserve.The first is energy. India imports 87.7% of the crude oil it consumes. Since the Russia-Ukraine war, we have substituted one geopolitical vulnerability with another: Russia’s share of our crude imports has leapt from 2% in 2021 to 35% by 2024, with import values rising from $1.1 billion to $50.2 billion. This is opportunism, not strategy. Over 50% of our LPG and LNG imports transit the Strait of Hormuz. Every escalation in West Asia, which is now near-permanent, hikes India’s fuel bill and, consequently, every Indian household’s cost of living.The second is food oils. India imports 55-57% of its edible oil requirements, worth Rs 1.61 lakh crore annually, from Indonesia and Malaysia (palm), South America (soybean), and Ukraine and Russia (sunflower). When the Ukraine war broke out in 2022, sunflower oil prices spiked by 60% overnight. A conflict 7,000 km away decided whether an Indian poor family could afford to cook.The third is fertilisers. Russia supplies over 80-90% of India’s needs in several critical fertiliser categories. India’s 150 million farm households unknowingly price their input costs in Russian roubles. Any sanctions shock, any disruption to Russian export infrastructure, impacts the farm and food inflation. Urea prices have jumped by around 55% since the Iran-US-Israel conflict began in late February.India’s 6.48% growth rate is real, and it matters. But growth powered by consumption that overwhelmingly draws in imports is growth that makes us simultaneously wealthier and more dependent. The record merchandise deficit is not a temporary disruption. It is the logical outcome of a development model that has prioritised demand without adequately building supply — that has spoken of self-reliance while structurally deepening reliance.Regarding energy, every rupee invested in domestic renewable capacity is a rupee subtracted from the crude import bill. India has 200-plus gigawatts of renewable capacity today. A credible target of 1,000 GW by 2035, pursued as a national security imperative rather than merely a climate commitment, can structurally reduce oil dependency over the course of a decade.Talking of electronics, the Electronic Component Manufacturing Scheme needs to be scaled by an order of magnitude, with technology-transfer obligations built in rather than bolted on. Assembling Apple phones is a beginning; fabricating the chips inside them is the destination.On food security, Mission Oilseeds and domestic fertiliser production must be treated with the urgency of a defence programme. Strategic reserves equivalent to six months of edible oil and fertiliser consumption should be a non-negotiable floor.A nation whose economic ranking moves with the rupee-dollar exchange rate, because its import bill is too large to defend against, has not yet earned the designation it aspires to as the world’s third-largest economy. Atmanirbhar Bharat is a worthy vision, but it must be matched by execution.Views are personal

Atmanirbhar vs Nirbhar Bharat

Atmanirbhar Bharat is a worthy vision, but it must be matched by execution.

AS Mittal

Unlock Premium Insights in This Article